1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical disc drive having a conductive plate that prevents the malfunction or destruction of electronic components caused by static electricity discharge (ESD).
2. Description of the Related Arts
When a user charged with static electricity touches a front bezel (an eject switch for a disc tray or the like) in order to operate an optical disc drive, the electricity is conducted from electronic components mounted on the back surface of the front bezel to a control circuit through the front bezel, and the electricity causes malfunction on the electronic components of the control circuit, or the electricity is likely to damage electronic components in some cases.
Moreover, the electricity sometimes causes electrostatic discharge damage also to electronic components (a laser diode or the like) incorporated in an optical pickup that reproduces information on the disc surface or records information on the disc surface.
For conventional techniques to meet these problems, there is a structure in which static electricity discharged in a front bezel is carried to a metal cover to be a shell for an optical disc drive through a grounding plate (referred to as a conductive plate below) for guiding the static electricity to an earth part and the metal cover is grounded to a PC main body, so that the static electricity is prevented from being discharged to electronic components, a laser diode, or the like as described above.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-152433 discloses a U-shaped conductive plate having a bent portion on the upper and lower part, the U-shaped conductive plate having a nail piece structure in which a rectangular opening is provided on the bent portions. The conductive plate forms a mounting structure on a disc tray having a retain projection including a projection provided at locations facing the nail pieces of the conductive plate. Moreover, a structure is disclosed in which the releasing end portion of the conductive plate is contacted with a chassis case to be a drive main body in loading the disc tray into the inside of a drive.
In addition, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-152844 discloses a structure of a conductive plate for static electricity discharge in which a conductive plate has a retain portion and a mounting part on the upper part and the side part each at one place and bosses provided on a disc tray are inserted into alignment holes in the conductive plate.